The National Post, Canada’s largest right-leaning national newspaper, has apologised for publishing a transphobic advertisement from the Institute for Canadian Values, headed by anti-gay lobbyist Charles McVety. The ad—which pretends to be written by a doe-eyed, four-year-old girl—is headed by the phrase “Please! Don’t confuse me!”

“I’m a girl,” it reads. “Don’t teach me to question if I’m a boy, transsexual, transgendered, intersexed or two spirited.”

The ad was created as opposition to new anti-bullying measures being implemented in the Ontario school curriculum. The measures were created to foster an atmosphere of tolerance for anyone who doesn’t fit in with a simple gender-binary, heterosexual identity.

Despite McVety’s hysteria, medical and psychological organisations continue to scoff at the notion that there is any danger of children “choosing” to change their sex or sexual orientation as a result of an open, tolerant curriculum.

After legitimate outcry, the National Post issued an apology promising not to run the advertisement again and admitting that the ad breached limits of taste. Calling the ad “manipulative,” the newspaper said it will be donating the revenue from the advertisement to “an organisation that promotes the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people.”

Crossroads Television System, a small Christian broadcaster and producer of religious programming, has permanently pulled Charles McVety’s Word TV from its schedule for having repeatedly violated the station’s Code of Ethics.

Word TV was the subject of a Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruling in mid-December, which found that McVety had violated multiple clauses from three different broadcast codes. This included multiple verifiable lies broadcast on the subject of gay people, including announcing that gay people have an “insatiable appetite for sex, especially with young people,” that the Toronto Pride festival actively promotes sex with children, and that it’s illegal in Canada to speak out against homosexuality.

After the ruling, CTS temporarily pulled McVety’s program, but the violations continued. In a press release, CTS indicated that numerous negotiations with McVety had failed, leaving them with no choice but to cancel McVety’s show due to a “lack of compliance with the CTS Code of Ethics to which Word TV agreed under contract.”

The press release continued to state that McVety was not only uncooperative with the negotiations, but also lied on the air, insisting that CTS was being pressured to censor the program. “The fact is,” CTS stated, “Word TV failed to keep its agreement to comply with the CTS Code of Ethics and indicated a refusal to comply in the future.”

A public elementary school in King City, Ontario has cancelled “opposite gender day” over concerns that it would result in gender identity issues or turn the students gay.

The day was proposed by the elementary school’s student council as a fun idea where kids could dress up as the opposite gender, if they wanted to. However, opponents, including Charles McVety—head of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, the Canada Family Action Coalition—were infuriated with the concept.

“If this was so innocent, then why did the principal not stop this right away?” McVety asked the press rhetorically. “This was part of a greater agenda to teach gender identity and to confuse our children at a young age, and to tell them they can’t be truly happy until they discover their inner identity.”

In reality, this “greater agenda” was the idea of elementary school students, including Ripley Antonacci, an eighth grader and president of the student council. “We just wanted to have a fun day and came up with the idea,” he told a reporter. “A lot of people do it for Halloween and we just thought it would be a cool idea.”

“We didn’t mean to offend anyone,” he added apologetically. “I was a little confused because I didn’t know why people would say those things.”

And that’s how the kids at King City Public School were taught that taking a lighthearted look at gender roles, even in the context of a fun dress-up day, is never acceptable.

TV just got a lot more intelligent! Charles McVety, president of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, the Canada Family Action Coalition, had his television program, Word TV, yanked from the air by its own distributer after McVety was found to have repeatedly violated industry broadcast standards.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulatory body created by the broadcast industry, developed codes of ethics in 1990 to which all members have agreed to adhere. Responding to a complaint, this council investigated McVety’s program, discovering multiple violations of these codes.

While the CBSC panel went out of its way to affirm that McVety is free to disagree with gay people and voice this disagreement on the air, they found that he had breached journalistic standards against purposefully misrepresenting truth as well as those prohibiting blanket attacks on identifiable groups. This included statements that the Ontario school curriculum was designed to turn children into homosexuals, that gay people have an “insatiable appetite for sex, especially with young people,” that it is illegal in Canada to speak out against homosexuality, and that the Toronto Pride celebrations promoted sex with children; all verifiable lies.

“McVety,” the CBSC wrote, “may not like homosexuality. That is his entitlement, but to leave the totally unsubstantiated impression that gay and lesbian adults have a predilection toward young, underage people is insidious and unacceptable.” In all, the panel found that McVety violated several clauses from three different broadcast codes.

McVety, of course, has learned nothing from this experience, informing supporters that his program was pulled “for using the term ‘sex parade’ and opposing the proposed Ontario Sex Ed curriculum,” painting himself as a martyr for having opinions.

Defending distortions with bigger, more easily verifiable distortions. It’s a little like rebuilding a snowman with a blowtorch, isn’t it? Then again, that’s our Charles McVety!

Charles McVety, the president of Canada Family Action Coalition, Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, has ramped up his opposition to Bill C-389. The bill, if passed, will prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity, giving transgendered men and women equal rights in housing, employment, and public services.

This, of course, has thrown McVety into utter fits, conjuring some pretty bizarre ideas. “As adults,” he told the media, “we can handle these things, but my daughter turned 13 on Saturday, and I don’t want some guy showering beside her at the local swimming pool.”

McVety continued, saying that the bill would allow people like convicted killer Russell Willams, who was photographed wearing women’s lingerie, to enter gender-restricted spaces.

Well, I hate to alarm McVety, but convicted killers can already enter locker rooms in public pools. Karla Homolka could be in his daughter’s locker room right now. Heck, there could be murderers in the men’s locker room too. Who knows who’s waiting to jump out from behind the shower curtains? No one is safe from the these maniac killers—no one! What was that sound?! AAAAAH!

Bill Siksay, the Bill’s sponsor, put it eloquently: “I think this is Mr. McVety being his alarmist best, once again, when it comes to an issue of human rights, equal rights, for minorities in Canada.” Clarifying the obvious, Siksay continued: “There is nothing in this bill that will change our understanding of appropriate behaviour in public washrooms or in gendered spaces.”

Indeed, transgendered people can largely already use the gendered spaces with which they identify, and it hasn’t even entered my mind that they’d somehow be any more likely to be voyeurs or act inappropriately than anyone else. Bill C-389 is simply about ending discrimination, particularly with regards to employment and other standard rights. And as it enters its third and final reading, things are looking promising, regardless of whatever paranoia McVety is content on spreading.

Charles McVety, one of Canada’s most frothy anti-gay lobbyists, has warned that a proposed sexual education curriculum reform currently being held for review in Ontario is “part of a militant homosexual agenda to normalize homosexuality in everyone’s mind and thereby promote homosexuality.”

(Say, wouldn’t it be swell if a kitten were born each time McVety uttered the word “homosexuality?” The world would become so much more adorable.)

The proposed curriculum—based on research into preventing teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases—is really just a frank discussion of sexual health issues introduced at appropriate ages.

The earliest grade affected by the reforms, grade three, is taught differences in skin colour, body size, cultures, and families. “Some students live with two parents,” one of the documents states, “Some live with one parent. Some have two mothers or two fathers.” (Across the country, several kittens are mysteriously willed into existence.)

By grade six, students learn about puberty and the physical changes they will experience. By grade 7, they’re finally taught about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and descriptions of safe-sex practices. Once the students have graduated from high school, teen pregnancy and infection rates will have dropped noticeably.

McVety, always one to expect the unrealistic, describes the whole thing differently, saying that the reform will “subject sixth graders to instruction on the pleasures of masturbation, vaginal lubrication, and 12-year-olds to lessons on oral sex and anal intercourse.” And all of this, of course, in an effort to “promote homosexuality.”

And who does McVety blame for all these non-existent, step-by-step lessons on anal sex and discussions on the “pleasures of masturbation?” Here’s a hint: It’s not the health researchers and scientists who back the real curriculum.

“We warned the country about this when same-sex marriage came in,” McVety announced to the press, “We changed the laws in this country, redefined marriage, the end result now this is coming into our classrooms.”

Such zeal! Such pent-up frustration! Perhaps McVety could use some relaxation time—a vacation—to help reflect on the strong possibility that he’s an idiot.

Charles McVety, spokesmouth of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, has declared that Canada is “now officially a homosexual country.”

Hey! We’ve done it! The gays have taken over the country! And, apparently, all it required was some aboriginal artwork from 1983 to be displayed on loan at Rideau Hall from now until mid-2011.

Oh yes, in an article entitled Canada is now Officially a Homosexual Country, McVety rails against Androgyny, a 20-foot, abstract mural depicting amoebic birds, fish, and people all looking toward a giant blue eagle. The award-winning painting symbolises the aboriginal belief that each sex is only half of our species and that—through growth, experience, parenthood, and ageing—we eventually unite both our masculine and feminine sides to become a complete human.

McVety somehow interprets this to be homosexual (uh, doesn’t that inherently involve one sex?) and holds back nothing in his protest against the painting, saying that its temporary installation in the house of Canada’s Governor General means that “political correctness has slithered all the way to the top” and that “the only conclusion is that Canada is officially a homosexual country.”

Interesting logic, but whatever; the gays are in charge now! And as my first act running the country, I shall outlaw plaid. Step two: Reform the Senate to become the Sen-sational-ate.

The federal Conservatives have withdrawn a film censorship clause from bill C-10. The clause, which would have allowed the government to withdraw tax credits to films and television shows that they deem “contrary to public policy,” was dropped amidst declining support in the polls during the election.

Evangelical lobbyist, Charles McVety, originally claimed responsibility for the clause, indicating that that any films with gay content, such as the sweet family comedy, Breakfast With Scot, would be among those ineligible for tax credits.

While I’m happy that the clause has been turfed, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that the Tories would introduce it again, or would have even turfed it if their poll support hadn’t been slipping.

They just really don’t want Slap Upside The Head: The Film to see the light of day!

Breakfast With Scot, an unbelievably sweet comedy about a closeted gay couple who unexpectedly finds themselves raising a bubbly 11-year old boy, is under attack once again by anti-gay lobbyists.

Previously, the Canadian Family Action Coalition led a boycott of the NHL over the film, which licensed the Toronto Maple Leafs logo. The boycott wasn’t very successful. (Go Habs!)

This time, though, Charles McVety, a spokesperson for the group, is seeking government intervention. He singled out the family comedy as being one that would have all its tax credits revoked by the government if Bill C-10, which is currently in front of the senate, were to pass into law. The bill seeks to deny tax credits to films after they’ve been produced if the content is found to be “objectionable.”

McVety—who previously claimed responsibility for Bill C-10, but has since backpeddled—summarized Breakfast With Scot as a film about “an 11-year-old boy who is being raised by a homosexual Toronto Maple Leaf to be a homosexual.”

Ignoring, for a moment, that the notion that someone can be raised to be homosexual is rejected completely by the psychological, medical, and academic community, I’m amazed by this misclassification. Either McVety has never seen the film, or he is lying about what he saw.

I had the privilege to see Breakfast with Scot last autumn in attendance with the director, producers, and its young star. It was a sweet, family comedy about a closeted hockey star and his lawyer husband who like to keep their lives discreet. They suddenly find themselves caring for a tragically orphaned 11-year-old, who enjoys cooking, dressing up in feather boas, singing Christmas carols in summer, and drawing exactly the sort of attention that his new guardians like to avoid. I won’t ruin the story, but to describe the film as anything but a gentle holiday comedy with strong, moral themes is dishonest.

Still, McVety has targeted and seeks to punish this film because the guardian characters are gay—a point central to the film’s comedic premise. “We are objecting to films that proselytize young people into homosexuality,” he told reporters. Laurie Lynd, the filmmaker, was stunned, adding that if the movie’s tax credits were revoked, it “could have killed the film completely.”

McVety has said multiple times that Bill C-10 is about ending the funding of pornography with tax dollars. That’s not what he’s demonstrating, especially since policies are already in place to prevent that. Instead, this bill is about revoking tax credits (not even funding) from any films that disagree with McVety’s ideology—and after they’ve been made, to boot. With this broad definition of what constitutes an objectionable film, and with an after-the-fact process, Bill C-10 will force filmmakers to reconsider producing anything with content as edgy as, well, a gay couple.

Sigh. Maybe I’ll just produce Slap Upside The Head: The Animated Film stateside.

Charles McVety, president of Canada’s largest anti-gay lobby group, has claimed responsibility for a bill in the Senate that would deny income tax credits to filmmakers who make “inappropriate” films. Once this bill becomes law, the Justice and Heritage departments will vet films for offensive content and withdraw tax credits, even a film has already been completed.

So, what’s the definition of “inappropriate” in this context? The Globe and Mail revealed McVety’s vision in an interview:

Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign.

If McVety’s vision is realised, filmmakers will be pressured to remove any gay content in a film, or face the revocation of their tax credits.

Filmmakers are furious. David Cronenberg, an Oscar-nominated, Canadian director said that this bill amounts to censorship, comparing it to “something they do in Beijing.” The Canadian Family Action Coalition’s press release, however, scoffed at such claims:

Accusations that this [bill] is about censorship are ludicrous. There is no law that says [opponents] cannot produce whatever perverted movie they want to.

Of course, “perverted” films are already restricted by section 163 of the Canadian Criminal Code, and television and film regulations already exist that prevent pornographic and obscene films from receiving tax money. This bill is, instead, about punishing filmmakers based on ideological content.

Surprisingly, this amendment seems to have made it to the Senate without many MPs knowledge. Bill Siksay, an NDP MP, said it was a “significant shock and surprise” to learn that he had voted for the amendment, which was buried deep within a 600-page bill.

Well, Stephen Harper has officially announced that he considers the same-sex marriage issue settled. Well, finally! But, gee, I wonder what the anti-gay lobby is up to today? Let’s go check.

It’s the Anti-Gay Lobby Press Release Roundup!

Hey, is that Gwen and the REAL Women of Canada over there? I hear they’re doing quite well after they successfully lobbied to scrap the court challenges program. Let’s take a peek at what they’re releasing to the press, shall we?

Elitist political leaders apparently believe that Canada is still in the twentieth century, where political parties ignored the opinion of the voting public. Arrogant political leaders do not, in fact, know what’s best for everyone.

Ah, yes—yes, if anyone should be deciding what’s best for everyone, it should not be political leaders. Special interest group leaders know much better! And, although polls indicate that a whopping 76% of Canadians did not want same-sex marriage re-opened, that’s totally not representative of the voting public! I mean, what about all those embittered old folks? Weren’t they the only ones that voted?

Ah, but why don’t we take a peek at what Charles and his wacky Canadian Family Action Coalition are doing?

The people of Canada are not going to let this go, because marriage is too important an institution to just let it evaporate because of the emotions of a few people in Parliament

Interesting stuff! I didn’t know that “a few people in parliament” corresponds to a wide-margined majority of exactly 175, but I guess I kinda see what he’s saying. That 175 wide-margined majority was totally just uninformed emotion.

Hey, do you think these two groups have issued a joint press release? That would be, like, a dream come true!

Since the Canadian public has been denied a voice on the issue of same-sex marriage, a very persuasive argument can be made for a referendum on the same-sex marriage issue. […] The time for a referendum has now arrived.

Wow; a referendum! Those are hard enough to get when the prime minister actually wants one. You guys just don’t give up! Well, good for you! Keep reaching for that star. You know, the one that fizzled out way back 1916, but the light is just reaching you now. It’s a pointless exercise, for sure, but keep at it! You’ll at least keep your shoulder joints active.